Thesis advisor: Mark Bradshaw / Managers prioritize questions from favorable analysts during earnings announcement conference calls, reinforcing analysts’ incentives to be optimistic. However, managers also interact with unfavorable analysts on calls, and, when they do, absolute announcement returns are larger. I seek to understand why managers interact with unfavorable analysts. I find that unfavorable analysts attenuate their negative views after these interactions with managers. Additionally, the stock price response is stronger for forecasts from managers who regularly interact with unfavorable analysts, consistent with enhanced credibility of these managers. Finally, I use peer firm restatement announcements as exogenous shocks to investors’ assessment of a firm’s accounting quality, and I find that nonrestating firms with managers who regularly interact with unfavorable analysts experience attenuated negative returns, relative to other nonrestating peers. Overall my findings are consistent with managers’ interactions with unfavorable analysts providing significant benefits to the firm, such as resolving analysts’ concerns and increasing managers’ credibility. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2023. / Submitted to: Boston College. Carroll School of Management. / Discipline: Accounting.

[pt] A partir de uma perspectiva sociointeracional de análise de uma atividade de fala, este trabalho busca investigar através de um mapeamento temático e interacional, como analistas de investimento e executivos gerenciam a produção das as perguntas e respostas para atingir seus objetivos comunicativos e que fatores orientam a produção dos participantes. O corpus é constituído de earnings conferece calls de três companhias de capital aberto brasileiras, acessadas via Internet. A análise considera os efeitos que a mediação tecnológica tem sobre a estrutura de participação; a influência dos papeis institucionais, das diferentes especialidades e do alinhamento de múltiplos objetivos, na interpretação dada pelos executivos às perguntas e suas estratégias argumentativas; e nas habilidades comunicativas de analistas e executivos para lidar com as especificidades das relações de poder e do objetivo fim do evento: a segurança nas decisões de investimento por peritos e leigos. / [en] This work uses a social-interactional and activity based framework to investigate through thematic and interactional mapping how equity analysts and CEOs manage the production of questions and answers to achieve multiple communicative purposes and which factors orient participant production in earnings conference calls of three publicly traded Brazilian companies accessed via the Internet. The analysis considers the effects of technological mediation on participant structure; and the influence of roles-relational, expert orientation and agenda alignment on the interpretation of questions made by executive and their argumentative strategies; and on executive and analyst communicative ability to deal with power play features and activity ends-objectives: safe investment decisions by expert and lay players.

Using the setting of earnings conference calls, this paper investigates the temporal focus of management presentation during those calls, i.e., the extent to which managers allocate their discussions to future firm prospects relative to past firm performance. I find a negative association between firms' past performance and the future focus of management presentation. Moreover, the association is less negative for firms with more long-term investors and is more negative for firms with high litigation risk. Additionally, I find that the temporal focus of management presentation is positively associated with that of analyst questions. I also find that managers' future focus is positively associated with the number of analysts following the firm but negatively associated with forecast quality of analyst reports (lower accuracy and higher dispersion). Finally, I find the future discussions in management presentation is positively associated with the time that analysts took to release the next quarter's forecasts. / Ph. D. / In recent years, it has become a common practice for public companies to hold earnings conference calls right after the release of their quarterly earnings results. Earnings conference calls are also publically accessible. Thus, earnings conference calls are believed to contain timely and important information to investors, analysts, and other interested parties. During the calls, managers first highlight the company’s financial performance and discuss its future prospects, and then answer some questions asked by call participants (primarily financial analysts). This paper investigates how managers allocate their effort to discuss the company’s future firm prospects (i.e., future focus) based on its quarterly earning results (past firm performance). I find managers are more likely to discuss future firm prospects when they have a bad quarter; and are more likely to discuss past results when they have a good quarter. In other words, there is a negative association between firms’ past performance and the future focus of management discussion. Moreover, I find the association is less negative for firms with more long-term investors and is more negative for firms with high litigation risk. Additionally, I find that when managers allocate more discussions on the future, analysts tend to ask more questions about the future. I also find that managers’ future focus is positively associated with the number of analysts following the firm but negatively associated with forecast quality of analyst reports. Finally, I find that managers’ future focus is positively associated with the time that analysts took to release the next quarter’s forecasts.

<p>Prior empirical research has shown that forward-looking statements can be particularly informative to investors (Li 2010; Muslu et al. 2014). However, the inherent uncertainty surrounding forward-looking statements may contribute to a delayed price reaction. This paper examines the market reaction to backward-looking statements and to forward-looking statements across a 60 trading-day horizon. I did not find evidence suggesting the inherent uncertainty of forward-looking statements contributes to a delayed price reaction. However, backward-looking statements are associated with a delayed price response. This result is consistent with Bernard and Thomas’s (1990) suggestion that post-earnings announcement drift is caused by investors not fully understanding how current earnings map into future earnings. I also provide evidence that, for the prepared remarks, investors have a stronger price reaction to net backward-looking tone than to net forward-looking tone. However, for the question-and-answer session, the opposite is true. Investors have a stronger price reaction to net forward-looking tone than to net backward-looking tone. This result suggests that managers should focus their prepared remarks on the prior performance of the firm and focus their responses during the question-and-answer session on the future performance of the firm. </p>

abstract: This dissertation examines the communication of U.S. Corporate executives in quarterly conference calls and in public forums at the World Economic Forum. Using grounded theory, the executive's core conceptual framework is identified and analyzed in the conference calls. Broadly speaking, it was found that an underlying aggressive orientation to the organization conceptualizes the executive as being the source of organizational activity. It places the executive in a causal-force relation to other organizational groups, which at once, inflates the role of the executive and poses a dilemma with respect to executive status and the communicative vitality of the organization. This project of organizational communication is situated within the broader areas of ideology, critical organizational scholarship, and communicative constitution of communication. The set of data consists of communication of executives of U.S. corporations in the S&P500 in 171 conference calls with shareholder agents. Grounded theory is used to identify the executives' conceptual view of the organization as it emerges from the data analysis. The findings from the analysis of the conference call data are presented in relation to two core categories, a causal-driving force and an ultimate objective category, including sub-categories that form an overall conceptual framework. An exploration of executive communication at the World Economic Forum extends these findings by demonstrating how it is transformed and mediated in a public venue in the presence of other stakeholders. One important finding from the study involves the emergence of a rival concept that poses an organizational dilemma for the future of the executive's communicative framework. And lastly, the issue of ideology is applied to the findings. This examination uses the sensitizing concepts of reification and fetishism drawn from the literature on ideology, which is developed into a systematic algorithm. The application of the findings to the model adds new insight into the relation between the executive and organizational communication. The results from this examination reinforce and highlight the conceptual dilemma the executive faces in relation to the organization and its future implications on organizational communication. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Communication 2019

Earnings conference calls are salient sources of firm-specific information that provide both hard and soft information to investors. In this paper, I find that institutional investors participate more actively in earnings conference calls held by firms that receive less attention than their peers prior to conference calls. I construct a measure of relative inattention using the Bloomberg Heat Score, which captures the aggregate search activities of institutional investors at the firm level. Using a broad set of earnings conference call transcripts, I identify participants affiliated with institutional investors and their dialogue to examine the association between institutional investors' inattention and their activities during earnings conference calls. I show that institutional investors appear more often, ask more questions, and request more guidance in conference calls held by firms that receive less attention before the calls. Collectively, the results indicate that institutional investors compensate for the lack of firm-specific information with conference call participation, despite potential costs of publicly revealing their information acquisition.

本文旨在探討投資人情緒與法人說明會之關聯性，即公司如何經由召開法人說明會，策略性地回應投資人情緒反應，以企圖影響情緒所導致的預期偏差。實證發現：管理當局策略性地改變其自願性揭露政策，以反映投資人情緒。當投資人情緒愈低落時，公司將傾向於召開法人說明會，且公司召開法人說明會之頻率亦會增加。相反的，當投資人情緒高昂時，公司則愈不會召開法人說明會。再者，當投資人情緒愈低落時，法人說明會所揭露之公司資訊將愈樂觀。此研究亦顯示公司自願性揭露政策的選擇，反映管理當局渴望維持樂觀之評價。 / In this paper we explore the association between investor sentiment and the likelihood of holding conference calls. In other words, this paper investigates how firms react strategically to investor sentiment via their conference calls in an attempt to influence the sentiment-induced biases in expectations. We show that managers strategically vary their voluntary disclosure policies in response to prevailing sentiment. We find that during low-sentiment periods, the firms are more likely to conduct conference calls and conduct them more frequently; while during periods of high sentiment they decrease the frequency of conference calls. In addition, during low-sentiment periods, the conference calls disclose more optimistic information. Overall, this study provides evidence that company’s voluntary disclosure choices reflect managers desire to maintain optimistic valuations.

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